


The Rose Tattoos

by Prochytes



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who (2005), Dollhouse, Heroes - Fandom, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-26
Updated: 2011-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-19 19:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Lydia’s power had unexpected results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rose Tattoos

**Author's Note:**

> Small spoilers for Heroes to 4x11 “The Fifth Stage”, Dollhouse to 1x02 “The Target”, and BtVS to 6x20 “Villains”; significant spoilers for Doctor Who “The Time of Angels”, and Torchwood 2x10 “From Out of the Rain” and “Children of Earth”. Thanks to arachnekallisti for a useful suggestion. Written for dark_fest. Title from Tennessee Williams.

1.

 

Lydia was surprised that the suit and flowery waistcoat had fooled her.

 

After he had gone, taking away the razor that had winked in the light of the Ferris Wheel, the eyes that had not, she sat in her trailer and shivered.

 

“What did he want?” asked Samuel.

 

Lydia bared her forearm.

 

“Just a girl?”

 

Lydia continued to disrobe. The girl’s grave gaze looked back at Samuel from Lydia’s sides and her stomach, her breasts and her thighs. The same face. Forty-eight times.

 

“How can this be?” asked Samuel.

 

“He needs an echo,” said Lydia. “Every single one of him.”

 

2.

 

They were subtle, after a fashion. They only appeared on Lydia’s skin when she was alone.

 

There was the strongman, his huge diminutive muscles flexing in apposition to Lydia’s as she moved. There was the girl underwater. There was the ringmaster beckoning, always beckoning. Lydia sometimes imagined herself to be a frail curtain of flesh, billowing between the real carnival and the painted. No great barrier, if one should be sufficiently determined.

 

Everyone at Sullivan Bros. knew that the tattoos revealed people’s needs. Lydia never told anyone what she herself suspected: some of her pictures had needs of their own.

 

3.

 

Beneath a small town in California, which the carnival visited one summer, there was a hole in the world. It gave Arnold migraines. They moved on quickly. Some of the locals were unfriendly.

 

“Your little whore’s a fake,” the patron spat. Samuel stared calmly back at him; beneath his feet, the earth stirred like a stretching cat. The patron retreated, muttering vague imprecations about his trio.

 

“What happened?” Samuel asked Lydia, later.

 

She looked puzzled. “I don’t know. As soon as I touched him, all my tattoos disappeared.”

 

Samuel shrugged. “I guess all our friend there really needed was skin.”

 

4.

 

He said his name was Brian Green. He said he had been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (yeah, right), and he had angered someone who could not die. He said that he needed to disappear.

 

Then he saw what had appeared on Lydia’s back, and said no more. Lydia heard the moan as he backed away, his scrabbling at the door. The door stayed shut, but when she looked around, Green was gone.

 

 Confused, Lydia inspected the tattoo in her mirror. She saw only a fading figure with its head in its hands, and a pair of feathered wings.

 

5.

 

And once there was the artist with the ivory eyes. Lydia’s time with him was unique in her experience, because what Isaac needed was a canvas. The tattoos whirled and pirouetted beneath his fingers, as the clever hands moved across her body. Isaac wove days and nights to cover Lydia’s shoulders and sent yesteryears to nestle between her legs. She felt he was making love to the whole of history.

 

Lydia knew that Isaac would leave tomorrow. Nevertheless, she was thankful for the lesson they both had needed. That sometimes the future was written in flesh, and not in stone.

 

FINIS


End file.
